Salad Days for the Dead, 1516 Anno Domini

Hieronymus Bosch had overslept.

Proud as a goat on a badminton court,

scratching and stretching,

straining for equanimity

between sleep and waking delight,

he knew he was late for his appointment

but did not care.

Finding his tin can with string - a gift

from da Vinci - he spoke:

"Baltraffio, I'm on my way; I'm coming with!"

(His dog quizzically sniffed at the other

can on the floor.) He kicked over

a candlestick in his first stumble

from bed, stepped outside,

nude as a witch, and mounted

the pope's dead elephant, Hanno

the all-knowing and diligent,

and rode off into the flaming house.

Slow Latitude (A Theology)

In the cool of a twilit forest,

remembered shadows spread

(slow ink through cotton quiet)

around the abandoned mill-race

in which I bathed my abraded body.

I looked around and sighed, shivering

with thread-bare joy

(and wondered how it was

the body, alive, decays

and one drop of blood

blooms fully in the seat

of a white, cotton skirt)

when, from the dense undergrowth

to my left, her right,

god, in a garland of temperate flowers, emerged

and softly walked by, coolly swaying

her goosefleshed bottom.

Teen Angst Remembered

Days passed on the raft,

and the only sight

was the sea.

The oar long lost

to water's bully hands,

nostrils full with briny vapor...

Pieces of flotsam, bearing

no resemblance to an oar,

drifted past.

A cruise ship fumbled

with horizon's skirt

like a drunken sailor,

then disappeared

while the north star

never had looked so beautiful

or so pointless.

Burning Bush-Woosh

Play Me

Lyrics:

I believe in Echo,
but what does she see in me
and all the crazy bigots in my head
throwing Christian babies into the sea?

I spy, with my cloudy eye,
a man afraid to touch the flame inside
and pull back a leprous hand
commandeered and directed by an alien plan.

Oh, I believe in Echo,
but does she believe in me
and all the foundering fuckers in my mind
playing doctor with the whore inside.